The present invention relates in general to computer methods, systems and computer program products for handling event messages associated with events of interest to a user.
Identity fraud is a crime in which a perpetrator obtains one or more key pieces of sensitive information about a victim, which may comprise an individual or an organizational entity. Exemplary sensitive information may include a Social Security number, driver's license number, tax identification number, password, account information, user identification codes, etc. The perpetrator utilizes the illicitly obtained sensitive information for nefarious purposes, e.g., to obtain false credentials, or to illegally obtain credit, merchandise, access to banking and brokerage accounts, and/or services that rightfully belong to the victim. Acts of identity fraud may be carried out by retrieving sensitive information that is stored in an unsecured manner remote from an individual or entity. Acts of identity fraud may also be carried out by intercepting the communication of sensitive information, e.g., by intercepting an electronic transmission that includes sensitive information.
Prior methods of identifying the occurrence of identity fraud could take weeks or months to recognize, making remediation of the theft difficult and time consuming to accomplish. For example, some credit card companies suggest that customers “self police” their accounts by periodically signing on to each credit card provider to manually verify the correctness of the reported transactions. This concept of self policing has at least two major drawbacks. One is that it requires people to periodically sign on to all of their accounts, which is time consuming, and therefore unlikely to be sustainable over time. This practice can also actually increase the risk of identity fraud. In order for a person to self police a number of accounts, the individual would have to access all of their accounts, typically by entering sensitive information such as their identification codes and passwords into a web site maintained by the creditor. An identity fraud perpetrator could observe or intercept this sensitive information either electronically or physically. For example, assets of the individual could be compromised in the event that the individual's computer system is infected with a virus that captures keystrokes and communicates those keystrokes to a source that uses the data to perpetrate identity fraud.
Current approaches for detection of fraud and identity theft also include the analysis of patterns, e.g., spending traits, in the accounts of customers. If a transaction is detected outside a determined pattern, the account owner is contacted to verify the validity of the transaction. One drawback to the pattern recognition approach is that it generates many false positives. It is anticipated that with an increasingly mobile society, it will continue to be difficult for automatic pattern analysis methods to catch a high percentage of criminal activity, without also triggering a concomitant high level of false alarms.